Who's for president?

Finding a new head of state may not stem the slide back towards bloody chaos

REVOLUTION, war, assassination, terrorist attacks, foreign intrigue, sectarian strife, a government paralysed and polarised between savagely bickering factions: it is hard to think of any devilish twist that Lebanon's recent saga, like a television drama desperate to improve its ratings, has not taken since the country began to break from the hold of its larger neighbour, Syria, three years ago. Yet the plot is still getting thicker.

The nastiest recent episode was grimly familiar. On September 19th, a parked Mercedes car exploded at a busy crossroads in the capital, Beirut, killing Antoine Ghanem, a member of parliament from the ruling majority, and four others (their funeral is pictured above). A Christian from the small, right-wing Phalange Party, Mr Ghanem was the 11th prominent opponent of Syria to be so targeted. Only three of those intended victims escaped with injuries, and dozens of ordinary Lebanese have perished in the spate of bombings. Not a single culprit has been caught so far.

But on September 25th the Lebanese drama switched abruptly from tragedy to something closer to farce, as its parliament, which has in effect been suspended since its speaker joined an opposition boycott of it last December, reconvened at last.

Constitutionally, the assembly must elect a new president of the republic before the term of the widely disparaged and doggedly pro-Syrian incumbent, Emile Lahoud, expires on November 24th. By tradition, it must choose a Maronite Christian for the post. But rules also require a two-thirds quorum of the 128 members, at least in the first round of voting. When the bell rang for deputies to take their seats, too few showed up to have a vote. The speaker adjourned the meeting until the end of October. So Lebanon's politicians could not even agree who is to act in the leading role for the next round of drama.

The ruling coalition, a Sunni Muslim-Druze-Christian grouping known as the March 14th alliance, which is backed by Western countries and Saudi Arabia, has said it may now elect a president merely with the simple majority it can still muster, despite the attrition-by-murder in its ranks. The opposition, which groups the Shia party-cum-guerrilla-army Hizbullah with disgruntled Christians, and is backed by Syria and Iran, has declared such a move illegal. It would amount to a declaration of war, trumpeted the leader of the main Christian opposition party, Michel Aoun. “Countries that support such a president should send their armies to protect him,” said the former general, who believes his tactical alliance with Shia parties bolsters his own credentials for the post.

Considering that two past Lebanese presidents were blown up before settling into office, that America, Israel and Syria have all repeatedly sent armies into the country in ultimately vain efforts to prop up protégés, and that some 150,000 people died in the civil war of 1975-90, such talk is not taken lightly. Adding to the gravity is the great extent to which Lebanon's internal schism mirrors the polarisation of the wider region. It pits those who retain some faith in the West, and would rather seek accommodation with Israel, against others who demonise America and dream of liberating Jerusalem.

Events such as the invasion of Iraq, the war with Israel last year in which some 1,200 mostly civilian Lebanese died, and the serial murders in Beirut have fortified such convictions, often embittering those who hold them. To many Lebanese, Hizbullah is an Iranian tool that brought ruin by provoking Israel, whereas its supporters accuse such critics, who include many in the ruling coalition, of collaborating with the enemy. While the March 14th alliance bluntly blames Syria for killing its leaders, its foes either whisper that the traitors deserve such a fate or hint that the killings are part of a plot by Israelis or fanatical right-wing Christians to wreck Lebanon.

The intensity of such passions has grown, fears one foreign diplomat, to the point where another assassination or a big event farther afield, such as a military attack on Iran, could reignite civil war. There is no hope of a solution in Lebanon, says another diplomat, until something big rejigs the regional equation, such as America or Syria taking a sharp new policy turn that might tip the local power balance.

Yet, just as Beirut's traffic manages to flow without much policing and ordinary Lebanese, though economically squeezed by the effects of political uncertainty, have coped for months without a fully functioning government, the outcome may not necessarily be catastrophic. Though they boycotted this week's sitting, opposition members of parliament did linger in the corridors to chat with the foes they had not seen since last winter. Amid a flurry of meetings between leaders of opposing factions, talk of reaching a compromise over the presidency grew louder.

Mr Aoun's Shia allies are known to be less than enthusiastic about “their” candidate, a maverick populist whose loathing for Syria runs as deep as his dislike of what he regards as the corrupt and feudal leaders of the ruling majority. The March 14th group, for its part, would prefer a staunch anti-Syrian from their own camp, but know that no effective president can afford to alienate the Shias, who make up a third of Lebanon's people. In any case, both sides recognise that since Lebanese presidents have limited powers, acting more as arbitrators and facilitators than as policymakers, the factional struggle will continue, no matter who occupies the presidential palace.

Several compromise candidates have been tabled. One is General Michel Suleiman, Lebanon's army commander, who has gained points by crushing a bloody insurrection of jihadists in a Palestinian refugee camp (with the loss of 170 Lebanese soldiers against several hundred militants) and by keeping the army above the sectarian fray. Riyad Salameh, a highly competent head of the central bank, Lebanon's only other effective and non-sectarian institution, has also been put up, along with half a dozen other prominent Maronites. Most Lebanese would at least agree that almost anyone would be better than Mr Lahoud, who has blithely presided over his country's slide towards chaos.